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Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Basement Clean Out

As our renovation came to a close, we moved things out of the storage area and back on to the first floor. And moving things out highlighted that we could use the space in the basement a lot better. Well, it highlighted it to me. I'm sure the rest of the family didn't care that much. I was probably influenced by way too much HGTV, too. I'm not sure if was great tacking on another project while we were wrapping up the first, but it's done now and I think people are pretty happy.

Here's how things looked at the start:

You may recall that I went through a metric ton of photo albums and cleaned out papers and old gadgets and knickknacks. We donated and sold excess furniture. I really wanted to see if we could get our storage bins emptied of the inessentials and make room for new memories.

I wanted new shelves in the room at the bottom of the basement stairs, and my eventual goal is to make that into a fun hangout room for the boys. They sort of lost their free-for-all playroom when we converted the fireplace room into the main dining room.

So once the storage room was cleaned out, I moved the padded workout flooring into the storage room. Then I moved the exercise equipment that I could handle into the storage room. A service guy had to move the treadmill, so that was an expense.

I still want to get the bikes hung up, but I need to buy hooks. I also want to extend the padded flooring further into the room.

Here's our new storage system in the main basement room. It's so functional. We have a ton of room there now. I don't have a great photo of the hangout space because it's blanketed with LEGOS, but I'm working on it. I think the boys deserve a comfortable (but inexpensive) carpet and a place to sit and a place to build and store LEGO projects.

Things are still in progress, but one thing is certain. It's so cold in the basement right now that running on the treadmill is not uncomfortable or sweaty.